01 Confirm the deadline applies to you

Mandatory registration commenced 1 July 2026. The 1 October date applies to unregistered providers delivering Supported Independent Living or operating as platform providers. Before you build a plan around it, check your own situation against the Commission's published transition guidance — the requirement is specific about who it captures.

• Confirm you are delivering SIL or operating as a platform provider
• Confirm you are currently unregistered
• Check the Commission's transition guidance for your circumstances

02 Work out your registration groups

Your registration groups determine everything downstream: your pathway, your evidence, your audit scope and your cost. Getting this wrong is the most expensive early mistake, because the audit is scoped to what you applied for.

• List every support you actually deliver today
• Map each one to its registration group (SIL sits under 0115 Daily Tasks / Shared Living)
• Decide whether to include groups you plan to deliver later — each one widens the audit
• Don't apply for groups you can't evidence

03 Identify your pathway

Lower-risk supports go through verification. Higher-risk supports — including SIL — go through certification, which covers more of the NDIS Practice Standards and takes materially longer.

Pathway	Applies to	Median time, 2024–25
Verification	Lower-risk supports	70 days
Certification	Higher-risk supports, incl. SIL	154 days

Those are medians measured from a complete application with an auditor already engaged — not from the day you start. Count backwards from your own deadline with that in mind.

04 Approach an auditor now — not when your documents are ready

This is the step that decides your timeline, and it's the one almost everybody does last.

Registration audits are conducted by approved quality auditors — a small, fixed pool of certification bodies approved by the Commission. Their capacity doesn't expand because a deadline is coming. A provider who finishes their documents in September joins the same queue as one who finished in July, further back.

• Contact several approved quality auditors, not one
• Ask each: current lead time, whether they're taking new SIL clients, and what they need before quoting
• Ask what the most common consultant-related non-conformance they see is
• Get the quote in writing — scope, stages, and what triggers extra cost
• Book the date, even provisionally

05 Lodge the application

Applying to the Commission is free. What you're paying a consultant for — if you use one — is getting the scope right and getting it in. Lodgement itself takes days, not weeks.

• Set up your provider portal access
• Complete the self-assessment against the relevant Practice Standards
• Submit with your confirmed registration groups
• Record your application reference and the date

06 Build evidence that describes your business

Not a folder of policies. Evidence that the way you operate matches what's written down. This is where purchased document packs fail.

• Policies and procedures mapped to the Practice Standards modules for your groups
• Registers: incidents, complaints, risk, conflicts, worker screening
• Worker screening checks recorded with expiry dates and an owner
• Position descriptions, induction records and training records
• Participant-facing documents: service agreements, consent, easy-read materials
• Evidence the system has actually been used — dated entries, not blank templates

07 Rehearse the director interview

Auditors question the director, not the folder.

A policy that exists but isn't used is just paper, and it doesn't survive someone asking the person in charge to show how it works in practice. Test these on yourself before someone else does.

• “Walk me through your last reportable incident.” — the actual one: who was told, when, what the clock was, what changed
• “Show me where you checked this worker's screening.” — the record, the expiry, and who owns noticing
• “A participant complains about a support worker. What happens next?” — as a sequence with names and timeframes
• “Who wrote this procedure, and when did you last change it?” — does the document belong to you, or to whoever sold it

If any of those makes you reach for a folder rather than an answer, that's the gap to close first.

08 Budget it properly

Reported all-in costs for registration run from a few thousand dollars to $15,000 or more, with audits alone reported at upwards of $10,000. Your own number depends on your pathway, how many registration groups you applied for, and which auditor you engage — which is another reason to get quotes early.

• Audit fee (get it in writing, and ask what triggers a re-visit charge)
• Documentation — build internally or buy, but it has to be yours
• Worker screening fees, per worker, by state
• Training and induction
• Your own time — the largest hidden cost

09 If you're already behind

Triage in this order. Don't work sequentially — run steps 4 and 6 in parallel.

• Call auditors today and find out real lead times before anything else
• Lodge the application even if your evidence isn't finished — lodgement is free and starts the clock
• Fix the evidence that describes your highest-risk supports first
• Rehearse the director interview before the audit date, not the night before
• Check the Commission's guidance on your options if you can't complete in time